Without apology CTH continues to state all opposition to President Trump finds the epicenter of motive behind the economic policy. There are trillions at stake.

Yes, there are ideological differences, but do not doubt for a moment the existential threat is the core principle behind America-First economics.

Multinational corporations and global financial interests have more than a generation of effort invested within the modern trade and economic constructs that President Trump is challenging head-on.

Politicians do not construct legislation, K-Street lobbyists do. Hundreds of millions have been spent purchasing politicians as a sales force to protect those financial interests. Challenge their financial trade schemes and you are threatening the livelihood and financial systems that generate massive wealth for very powerful people. Additionally, the downstream effect threatens the affluence of the professional political class.

That said, there are American interests who will benefit, it’s just not popular within the cocktail party circuit to admit it:

(Bloomberg) China’s plan to counter U.S. import tariffs may throw global aluminum and steel traders into a tizzy, but the net result could be a boon for American primary-metal producers.

The retaliatory plan to slap tariffs on U.S. aluminum scrap and some steel products may boost American supplies, lowering raw-material prices, says Zaner Group LLC’s Peter Thomas. That could coax some metal producers to restart unused capacity in Rust Belt states if infrastructure spending picks up.

“In Indiana they’re going to be making a huge push to get things fired up,” Thomas, a Zaner senior vice president, said Friday by phone.

One aluminum scrap trader agrees with the premise, but he says the other side of the coin is that suppliers could be the biggest losers. Marvin Polikov, a vice president at aluminum scrap trader Metal Exchange in St. Louis, also says companies need a lot of time before they can, and probably would, restart unused refineries. (read more)

We are literally sitting on a hand with a Royal Flush! The best part is that the world knows what we have. Look how quickly South Korea 🇰🇷 got the damn message. At some point next week we are going to hear about the first bilateral deal that has been concluded.

A few days ago our President threatened to reduce our military presence in South Korea 🇰🇷. If you are them and you have North Korea 🇰🇵 ready to blow your country off of the face of the Earth, you realize it is time to sign an offer you can’t refuse.

I said a month ago that 2018 was going to be the year of getting our trade situation dealt with. People are going to be shocked next year when our real GDP annual rate goes from 2.3% in 2017 to 2.7% in 2018 to 4% in 2019. That increase will have everything to do with the fact that our President saved our country $250 Billion dollars 💵 from our trade deficit.

2019 we will also have 5 LNG refineries up and running. We currently have one at this point. 2020 our country will be looking at 5%+ real GDP!

OMG, how big of fools the RINO and Donkeys are with their ploy to sell out the (R) Party with the Omnibus deal of 2018.
1. Trump got full funding for the Military.
2. While the President is constrained by the US Constitution to follow the dictates of The Budget, as Obama pointed out, a “Continuing Resolution” is not a “Budget” and so any dictates on how to spend it are null and void. All of the Planned Parent money can be redirected by the President to build a Border Wall.
3. The RINOs and Donkeys forgot Trump’s reputation before he went into politics: “Trump’s a NYC Street Fighter, with excellent Counter-Punching skills.”
4. The RINOs and Donkeys have no idea what a tempest that they have just unleashed!

We have been at the receiving end of a ‘trade war’ for decades. The enemedia and opposing countries (beneficiaries of our blind generousity) are enraged that President Trump is starting to counter-punch. The greedy vultures that nudged our America into this deficit are trying to cover their sudden nakedness as they realize their partying is exposed. President Trump ( and Wolverines) will end the ‘trade wars’.

True!
We have no vision of the battle waged behind the scenes. For some reason, President Trump NEEDS the military funding so bad he is taking the lumps from his base.
Uniparty dared POTUS to sign that monstrosity. Would a veto have stalled all of the Inspector Generals work? Can the Wall be deemed a necessary thing for the Military and to stop the flow of Drugs? Can the Wall be deemed infrastructure? If I were POTUS, the Wall samples shown to the media were a diversion. The true prototypes are tested somewhere else. Would not be surprised if a refurbished wall design from club Gitmo found its way to the southern boarder

“all opposition to President Trump finds the epicenter of motive behind the economic policy.”
“good to get the budget settled ”

We were never going to get everything we wanted, the President has to evaluate his situation and deal accordingly. WAR is a fluid situation. You have your battle plans; however, most of the time adjustments will have to be made.

1) No wall – a) Well then instruct Gen. Mattis that you want troops on the border. According to the Constitution, it is the Army’s responsibility to protect us from invasion. Start shooting and you will see how fast the flow of illegals will stop.

b) Announce you are placing land mines on federal lands where the environmental wackos don’t want a wall. Less area to patrol

2) No DACA deal, start deporting them. Then we will see how fast the four traitors will be in for negotiations.

3) Etc.

Does everyone that is a doubter of our President get the picture? He has options, I have more ideas, also not “politically correct”..

I disagree with your assessment that “The majority of immigrants are poor and desperate people, often taken advantage of.”
Almost all of the Illegal Aliens seeking to cross our southern border, pay “coyotes” $2000 to $3000 to get them across. That is the opposite of poor and desperate.
The Illegals are smart enough to know things are different now with PDJT in charge. There has already been a decline in attempted border crossings.

If you tried to enter Mexico illegally and were caught, you would be thrown in a Mexican jail for years.

You go to buy something these days and they are trying pass off metric as if it’s normal.
You go read an article written in the USA and you have to go find an online calculator/conversion to figure out what they are talking about!

Option: Declare a National State of Emergency for Invasion of Illegals including Gangs, Narco Terrorists, Radical Islamic Terrorists and Illegal Aliens overwhelming our Social Support Systems.

Option: Direct the Military to TERMINATE the INVASION – MadDog Mattis style.

Option: Drone patrols with automated targeting of any human that crosses the fence line, to compensate for our inadequately-staffed and -funded Border Patrol.

Option: Extreme Vet – with our inadequately-staffed and -funded ICE and Border Patrol resources – every Import Shipment with hands-on inspections to prevent money, drugs, weapons and WMD devices from crossing into America.
• Until we have quadruple the resources currently available, wait times at border crossings and ports may run into weeks and months.
• Divert MAXIMUM ICE resources from Border Crossings and Ports to apprehension-detention-deportation of Illegals, until Sanctuary Cities FULLY cooperate and 90% of Illegals have been successfully deported.
• Good luck, globalists, with your schemes to sustain and grow our Trade Deficit.

I heard sometime last year that some illegal gang banger in the Boston area was arrested for something. He was in possession of five different welfare benefit/public assistance cards with his picture and five different names. Of course, it did not make MSM. I think that I heard it on Howie’s radio show broadcast on Newsmax TV.

“Santiago was arrested in June 2015 and charged with trafficking $1.5 million in EBT benefits, also called food stamps or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, at three stores he owned in the Lawrence, Mass., area. He and several of his employees would deduct money from a customer’s EBT card and give a fraction of that money back to the customer in cash, the Boston Globe reported in 2015.”

I agree about using using firearms on the border until the wall is in use, but isn’t there a rule called ‘posse comitatus’ that prohibits federal troops operating within the states? Maybe a bounty on heads would suffice, and would allow locals in the area the right to protect their lands as best they can.

The Posse Comitatus prevents the use of Armed Forces to enforce the law. They can be “deputized” to assist local law enforcement and the US Marshalls.
The DoD does have an obligation and requirement to provide for “homeland defense”. The President could declare that the Cartels are an active and imminent threat to National Security and thus direct the DoD to take positive measures to prevent that threat. The appropriate Rules of Engagement would be to consider anyone attempting to enter the US at a place other than an “Official Border Crossing” would be a Cartel member attempting to enter the US for Unlawful Purposes and to stop them from entering regardless of age, gender, or nationality.

The law you are referring to is about enforcing law inside the US itself if I remember it correctly. I do not believe it would prevent the military from being used to stop invaders invading the US. And all illegal aliens are invaders.

“Politicians do not construct legislation, K-Street lobbyists do. Hundreds of millions have been spent purchasing politicians as a sales force to protect those financial interests.”

Craig B.Hulet has maintained for years that every one of our 535 law makers is bought and paid for. Each one has a lobbyist assigned to their office to tell them how to vote.

He was a Speech Writer and Special Assistant for Special Projects for Congressman Jack Metcalf (R-WA), among many other things. Biography is here, there used to be links to podcasts he did over the years on radio shows. He used to have a website using his name (with middle initial); however, it is no longer operational (goes to business site, below) :

I just noticed this message post on the website I listed above. Back in the summer of 2015 access to that material was free. A few hundred *pdf files, etc. on stuff like Obama’s Internment Camps, Plans to frame Assad for using chemical weapons.

Just little stuff like that. Probably the recordings to the radio shoes, too.

We ask that you please support KC&A with a small amount:
$12.00 for 12 months access to this site and updates when Hulet
Will be interviewed again. One dollar each month up front; seems fair.

Yep…..it’s sad, but the real world. You get into Congress and the first thing that happens is someone approach’s you and says; “I’ll give you a million a year, a 3 million dollar house, etc” “Just. vote as I tell you”

I remember asking my father ( life-time GOP) why he was voting for JFK while pinching his nose. He replied that Kennedy was so wealthy that he would be less apt to be corrupted like most ‘new’ Washington arrivals. “ They come to Washington in their rusty, trusty Ford, but within a month their driving a Cadillac.” That conversation was almost 60 years ago.

In congress, before legislation can be considered it requires sponsors. The sponsors names are recorded on the legislation and exposed to the public. We need the same practice for spending bills. Every expenditure needs to identify the sponsor.

I don’t understand. How is a tariff on scrap aluminum going to lower the price of raw materials (ore and smelting chemicals)? I would think it would be the opposite as there will be an increased demand in primary metal. I can understand why it would be good for primary metal making, but the raw materials part doesn’t make sense to me.

All I know is that aluminum is very economical to recycle because of the huge amount of electrically it requires to break the bonds in the ore when it is first produced. I am not a metallurgist and do not play one on TV, but I suspect that the high grade alloys for airplanes are only made using virgin aluminum from ore because of trace impurities of other things in the recycled metal.

A bit about recycling aluminum:http://recycling.world-aluminium.org/review/quality-value/“Globally, aluminium achieves among the highest material recycling rates for end of life products, with up to 90% for transport and construction applications. The metal’s economic scrap value and ability to be recycled continuously makes the aluminium beverage can the most recycled container in the world, with a global average recycling rate of 60% and a rate of over 90% in some countries….”

Thanks -that is AWESOME. I knew we had to do something with the way the candidates get the money for their re-elections, I just was not sure how it all worked. No wonder the income tax code is what -78,000 pages long or something?

Another thing that influences the lawmakers is that they have to suck up and toe the line with the political party to get re-election money. They are beholden to the “party”, NOT the constituents.

I’d like to see an Amendment that restricts candidate to funding from people – not businesses, union, pacs or bundlers – people, living breathing individual people, who live within the district or state and who aren’t registered to vote in another jurisdiction. All the excluded sources to allowed to run ‘issue ads’ but may not identify or support any candidate in any manner.

The stock market continued with it’s Tariff Tantrum today, and will likely continue for a while yet.

I think a lot of it is the ‘uncertainty’ of what is going to happen.
The stock market doesn’t like uncertainty.

We’ve never had a President fighting back for us in this trade war that has been waging against us…for the last 4 decades.
People don’t know what they are looking at.

But once investors see that Pres Trump and his team are Steadfast in their Trade Policy…and new opportunities for investment are blooming, in Main Street type businesses…then I think there will be a rush to invest in all the ‘America First’ ventures.

The TARP money had to be repaid with interest. My company received TARP funding and repaid it entirely within two years. We actually had government auditors on site to monitor the process of repayment. I know, because as a facilities manager I had to establish a secure site on premises for them to do so. I strongly doubt much of those TARP loans to other companies are still outstanding.

I wasn’t a fan of government bailouts, but without those TARP funds, my company would’ve gone under. We were a Fortune 100 company and also received loans from a foreign company, which we also paid back. Without this help, we would’ve been cannibalized and liquidated via a hostile takeover, and more than 20,000 employees would’ve lost their jobs. My company is back in strong standing and I am retired earning my pension, which would’ve most likely become insolvent.

Fortune 100 company in financial trouble because of government tampering in economy?
You were one of the lucky few. Many small businesses could not survive, weren’t bailed out by TARP. They can’t retire. I guess people on main street are collateral damage in big government.

Hubby and I were talking about this today when some “expert” on FBN was whining about the negative impact on companies that need steel/aluminum to make their products. They had a keg mfg on and he was just whining, whining, whining. Hubby started yelling “you guys just got a huge tax break, a nearly 40% decrease….get over it!”

I can’t wait until we start producing again. No more cheap Chinese material. It IS a matter of national security. I can’t believe we let a red Commie country even get this far and build this much power. It would have been unconscionable 30 years ago.

Perhaps we should discontinue issuing visas to Chinese students. In particular, engineering students. We train them, and upon graduation, head back to China or go to work for one of their shell companies here, stealing technology.

SOLUTION: Divert ALL Visa processing resources for Student and H-1B Visa Applications/Renewals to extreme vetting for every illegal located by ICE, every immigrant citizenship application and every migrant request.
• Until the Border Wall has been COMPLETED.
• Until all Sanctuary Cities have been CLEARED of Illegals.
• Until all Employers have completed AUDITED E-Verify on all employees

I just want to add my small piece to this. I can’t wait until I can purchase real live Made in the USA aluminum foil. I even gave up and started buying the “heavy duty” Chinese garbage and it is so fragile it rips like tissue paper if I look at it wrong.

I heard that $3 billion figure mentioned somewhere and started giggling. Not only the $50-60 billion punitive IP tariffs, but the steel & aluminum ones on top of that, plus whatever else Trumps wolverines come up with!

Not much they can do to us without strangling their own economy or starving their people, because they’ve already been screwing us the whole time!

And keep in mind the Stock Market is basically an auction market. It does not really effect most people. If a person owns stock and the price of the stock goes down the person has not lost money. If you don’t sell at a lose you don’t lose money.

The exception is of course if the business actually goes out of business you have lost the money. But that requires the business to shutdown.

Sometimes (probably rarely) a manufacturer will have to use something imported if they want the best. I have been purchasing New Balance footwear for over 20 years.I do not know exactly (~10 years?) I noticed the “with some imported materials”. I asked the manager ( who was also taking care of me) of the store about that. He said that was because the best shock absorbing compound was made in Japan.

If NB wanted to use the best, they had to source it there because a factory was not going to be built here for that product. Some of the best paper for printing bibles also comes from Japan. Then it goes to the Netherlands to some of the best bible text block printers. Finally the printed text blocks go to the United Kingdom to be bound by hand in small binderies.

You are correct, but it’s because we have stopped growing our vocational specialists. At one time I had a choice of dozens of local printers for color, B&W, glossy, whatever. My brother published a newspaper with soup to nuts available in one eight-block area. Suddenly, the best and only competitive prices were out of China.

One of my artist buddies found she could purchase canvas, inks and oils, brushes, framing, etc. for 1/2 the price from China WITH SHIPPING to the U.S!

Another family friend with a big name in textiles and tailoring out of Italy simply could not make a profit going against Chinese men who came in for the weekend, measured you and delivered the tailored outfit the next week. Heck! They had Scotch and canapes at after-5- p.m. parties to decide pinstripe or…before they met their spouses for dinner.

We have to redevelop our home markets. We used to excel at all of this.

Is anyone here old enough to remember collecting newspapers, cans, bottles for your Scout or school program? It was an easy way for 10-year-olds to gather their credentials for a high school job. Dad may have had to make room in the garage for the collections and Mom may have had to drive you to the local collection center, but it proved your mettle. You contributed.

We may not have newspapers in abundance, but heaven knows we have catalogs. Where are the pre-teen entrepreneurs? Cans? Bottles? I have dozens in my front yard after every ball game.

Ha, ha. I am old enough that my first “job” if you would like to call it that was to collect all the beer and pop bottles (they used to be actual glass bottles) that people would throw out of their car windows or whatever from around the neighborhood and several blocks beyond. We kept them and then took them to the grocery store because they had a return value of a few cents. Seems like it was a penny for a beer bottle and a nickle for a pop bottle.

It gave us kids a little pocket change, picked litter up out of the neighborhood.

That is how we paid for all of our field trips in grade school, including the only buses I ever got to ride on. My parents also collected everything from the school and ran it to the recycling centers. Later they would also run the neighborhood patrols, and help keep the neighborhood as crime free as possible.

• YUGE Tariff/Tax/REPARATION CHARGE on EXPORTS of ALL scrap steel and aluminum, along with Iron Ore and Coking Coal.
• This delivers a DIRECT HIT to the Chinese Cheaters.
• Use the proceeds to fund construction of new Steel Mills and Aluminum Smelters.

No. I don’t think we need to get into the top-down business model. Use the proceeds to pay down the debt and lift many of the restrictions that prevent smaller manufacturers from getting into the game again.

Let’s break down the Chinese import tariffs on US Goods.
1) Fruits-Seasonal. China imports HUGE amounts of food. They went and bought up land in Africa (??) to grow and supply food to China cause China is short of water. You eats fruit when they are ripe. You can also can and preserve fruit to eat at a later date….Oh wait, that’s moar manufacturing jobs.
2) Nuts. Same benefits to US as fruit. Why have the price of nuts skyrocketed in the past few years? Has the extra revenue trickle down to farmers?
3) Pork. China imports HUGE amount of food. Chinese folks need protein. Bad news for tigger and rover.
4) Recycle aluminum. We melt down that recycled aluminum and make stuff in the US. No need to ship it to China so they can sell back new aluminum.
5) Freight cost. $800 billion trade deficit. If we cut out the back haul of bulky food items to China, the round trip freight cost of container ships is allocated to the “China to US” leg of the trip, increasing the landed cost of Chinese imports.
6) California Wine industry!! Meh, maybe some of the Mexicans will finally go home.

Keep in mind the Chinese businesses (Government as well) has been cheating for a long time. Remember, they were sending products to Mexico and Canada and then pretending the products were from Canada and Mexico to avoid paying the existing tariffs. Look beyond what the “Progressives” claim to find the basic facts.

“Politicians do not construct legislation, K-Street lobbyists do. Hundreds of millions have been spent purchasing politicians as a sales force to protect those financial interests. ”

I am of the understanding that it is nearly impossible to “sue” a member of Congress. But it would seem to me that following the money trail would be easy enough to “prove beyond a reasonable doubt” that a given Menshevik was in fact accepting a bribe; and that the residents of K-Street were in fact bribing legislators.
Breaking this cycle would seem to be the first step that is needed to begin address trade issues.

Perhaps something for an Allen Dershowitz type person to look into?? Where are judges like Roy Bean when you really need them?

Just south of us here Georgetown SC is getting their Steel Mill up and running again . The jobs are posted and the process has begin . Georgetown SC is also a port town just to the North of Charleston SC .

With BOEING , Mercedes , BWM already located in SC the market for steel products is here as well . The port of Georgetown may see a resurgence should Georgetown Steel decide to export on at least transport up and down the Atlantic coast .

The KEYNESIAN’S ( central planners ) told us those jobs and industry were gone forever . THAT is up to you to decide if their just plain stupid or the goal all along was to grind down America .

If I recall the average income per capita in Georgetown SC is around $26,000 a year . With the Steel mill providing good jobs there are also ancillary support jobs that grow along with that .

Also good paying job like trucking , accounting , office workers , and much more .

TRUMP !! you built THAT !!! by removing the GLOBALIST intentional barriers to America progress and the regulations that have been killing CAPITALISM for a long time .